Local artist finds inpiration along life's road

Published 7:00 pm, Saturday, April 2, 2005

Daily News/CHANNING JOHNSON

Larry Butcher's exhibit "The Rituals of Birth, Death, Love, and Reconciliation" opened this weekend and will run through the end of May. Many of the pieces in the gallery at the Creative Spirit Center were inspired by Butcher's battle with cancer.

Larry Butchers art often is inspired by road trips. After traveling cross-country with friends, brothers or alone, he returns to his studio to further explore his visual and spiritual experiences  the interplay of earth and sky on a distant horizon, the relationship between man-made and nature-grown, and the decline of mans virility and inevitable mortality.

The work, then, becomes another kind of journey for Butcher. Occasionally, a work in progress can produce elements that forewarn of a journey not yet taken. Such is the relationship between several of Butchers pieces and the journey he and his family embarked on in 2001.

Within a short time, three members of his family were diagnosed with cancer  his mother, his father, then Butcher.

"Doctors found that a real anomaly, three members of the same family," Butcher said.

In August 2001, Butchers mother was diagnosed with cancer. She died eight days after being diagnosed.

Two weeks after his father finished chemotherapy, Butcher was diagnosed with nasal pharynx cancer.

After surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, Butcher recovered and is, as far as he knows, cancer-free.

During treatment, he continued to work daily in his studio. The work during that time is especially powerful, but it was a piece he completed just before his mothers diagnosis that he said has a lot of premonition qualities.

The piece is titled "Buck 49 Superdancer…The Earth Takes Everything Back; BUCKS, BUICKS, US," and is part of an exhibit on display at Creative Spirit Center through May.

Though "Buck 49 Superdancer" was completed and titled before his mothers death, Butcher said many of the elements remind him of the night the family took her home from the hospital, her death and her funeral.

Several of the paintings on paper in Butchers exhibit were completed later, while he was undergoing cancer treatment.

"There are four paintings on paper that have a strong summation of my state of mind at the time," he said.

The four include: "Eros," "Fury," "Y" and "Timing The Void."

After the third week of treatment, Butcher said he was no longer able to paint so he continued to work on collages.

"I showed up at the studio each day, worked until I was exhausted and went home," Butcher said.

A few pieces in the exhibit include collages from his Road Series, inspired by a motorcycle road trip out west with his two brothers in 2000.

"While I was driving on the flat lands, there was something about the rising sun or the rising moon that look made me think about doing some pieces on dark paper. I wanted to work with light, rising orbs on the horizon…very long like the horizons on the prairie."

The subplot was an element of technology, an old theme of Butchers, pitting man against nature.

"There is an edge, an element of technology where pathos meets pity," Butcher explained. "In the academic arena, I realize much of our budget is eaten up in technology, the love of technology, what I call academic heroin. Its like well do anything to make sure we have the best. It sacrifices being able to hire teachers and staff, things that are more practical. We just sell it out for technology because were so in love with it."

A recurring image in Butchers work is the eye of a loon.

"I use that as kind of Gods eye … witnessing," Butcher said. "And Im also thinking about these as the moment when the sun rises, the lands there, in that frozen moment the celestial body way out there (it) mingles and dances with the light. I also came to the conclusion that this about my land-bound self, being part of the land not the celestial body."

People asked Butcher if he was angry that he got cancer.

"I told them, Im not angry, Ive got things to learn. Its very disruptive to your life, you come to some kind of grips with that. The earth takes everything back."